 |
| |
|
 |
 |
||
 |
 |
||
 |
|||
EVENTS
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|
Golden pitch Winning at Daytona helps drive sales for Big Three
By Mike Fish, CNNSI.com DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- What's winning the Daytona 500 worth? It's money, money ... and sales. It's a record paycheck for the lucky driver of at least $1.3 million -- plus a slew of bonuses. It's a golden sales pitch for the auto manufacturer whose car takes the checkered flag. "Last year, we're in victory circle, and my comment to our general marketing manager was 'You can advertise at the Super Bowl, but you can't win it,'" said Sam Scott, manager of Ford's racing division. "This is one sport that allows us to be on the sidelines and take that excitement to point of sales." The Ford racing team struck the mother load last year by taking the top five spots in the Daytona 500, led by three-time champion Dale Jarrett. All told, the Taurus drivers pocketed almost $3.4 million. Ford executives acknowledge car sales enjoyed a bump, with the victory particularly helpful to jazzing up the image of the Taurus. "The Taurus is the best selling car we have in the U.S., but it gives us an opportunity to lower the age group that looks at that car and gives it consideration," Scott said. "That is very important to us. The average age of those buyers keeps creeping up as people get into pickup trucks and sports utilities. If we can make somebody look at the Taurus who would have considered it an older generation car, then we've accomplished a huge mission. "By the same token, after the race, we don't get customers going to a dealership saying, 'Dale Jarrett won the Daytona 500, I want to buy a new Taurus.' But we do promotions in advance of the race, and we can measure the people who came to the dealership and signed up for the program and track to see if they came back. It's not an impulse buy. So we try to create a shopping atmosphere, and winning certainly helps." The Ford run isn't likely to continue this year. Drivers have moaned all week about the performance of the Dodge Intrepid, contending NASCAR cut them too much slack on their aerodynamic package for the season-opening Daytona 500. Dodge returned after an 18-year hiatus to claim the top three spots in qualifying. The top Ford driver, Jeff Burton, qualified eighth. The marketing folks can live with the healthy competition amongst the Big Three. They're united by a single rival -- foreign imports. "That is a bigger threat to our market than each other," Scott said. "There is no bigger rivalry in any sports than Ford and Chevy. Now you have Chrysler fans and GM and Ford. That's great for marketing of this product. If you're focused on Ford, Chevy and Dodge -- then you're not focused on Toyota and so forth."
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
